Croydon – locked down and sanitised centre surrounded by a ruined periphery. // Walking the perimeter of the Croydon Business Improvement District (BID) exposes a contemporary urbanism where the central zone is preserved and everything outside is sacrificed. // The BID zone is funded by private investment and is patrolled by teams of private security firms, cleaners and ‘street ambassadors’. Democracy is no longer enacted on the streets, the only permitted mode of behaviour is consumption.

Cities are not centrally planned, schemes are imposed by different bodies across contingent zones leaving interstitial breaks. Sometimes the edge of the city folds back in, the liminal emerges in the centre. It is in these gaps where political life emerges as a current. These are the spaces where excluded voices become audible, where the stickers, flyposters, scrawls and scratches become the expression of a collective unconscious, a marking of territory, a set of warnings.

This walk is a beating of the bounds, by walking the border of the BID we hear echoes of the Inclosure Act. We should set about reversing this process, if enclosures starved communities of their vigour and co-operative spirit then we should unbind the boundaries, destroy the walls and fences, open up private resources.